Strategies, tips, how to's and best practices for online video publishers

Businesses today rely on a number of things to help them to advertise their products or services. With real estate, it is all about location. With online businesses, it is all about visibility. In order to engage your website visitors and keep them coming back, you have to give them something that intrigues them. Online video is an excellent way to impress website visitors and keep them coming back for more.

Following is a list of 5 ways that online video can help you to increase your business.

1) Using online video can help you to make consumers more aware of your brand. The first step in increasing your business is to make yourself known. Video is all about making you visible. Creating a video that keeps your audience interested will help to move them through the sales process.

2) Video can also help you to build trust. People typically tend to not do business with people that they do not know. Video will help you to build a relationship with your website visitors and allow them to get to know you, making them much more likely to buy from you.

3) You can also use online video to help you with training. You can train your customers on how to properly use your services or products.

4) Major brands have been using video for some time to increase product sales. Having a video on your site will show your customers that you are serious about your brand and that you care enough about them to give them a better user experience.

5) Finally, you can use video to be in more than one place at the same time. You can send sales associates or executives to trade shows to promote your products without ever having to leave the office. You can save on travel expenses and give your staff more free time to work on other projects at the same time.

Video has been proven to be an effective tool in increasing conversion rates online. You should note however that a bad video is going to do just the opposite. When you decide that it is time to join the major brands in online video, ensure that you are providing your website visitors with a professionally produced video that explains your business message and presents you as an expert in your field.

This article was written by Vidify, specialists in the provision of online video production services at a national level. Visit them at vidify.co.uk today.

Making a positive first impression is critical in any situation. Whether it’s a business meeting, live event or online video, your appearance and delivery is key to your success. Now, with vast improvements in video quality it’s become the norm to watch webcasts or meet and greet each other on one of the many video platforms, including: WebEx, Skype, ooVoo, Google Hangouts, Ustream, Livestream, Qik, and many more. With all the technology, the simple rules of proper etiquette when using these tools become more important than ever. Making sure you sure you have good lighting and sound is not enough. According to Lisa Gaché, Co-Founder and CEO of etiquette education company Beverly Hills Manners, the lack of etiquette can derail the effectiveness of a video conference session.

“A lot of people think once they have a mic and a web cam they are all set to jump into video conferencing,” says Gaché. “We encourage people to be prepared to use these new technologies effectively as they would any other business tool.”

When it comes to video conferencing, there are some things you definitely shouldn’t do. Be sure to behave on camera because people can always see you on group video calls, even when you’re not speaking. Check out this video, What Not to Do During a Video Conference by NoStaticST, for good video conferencing etiquette.

This short video, What Not to Do In a Webcast by webcasting vendor MediaPlatform, presents the things to avoid when making a corporate webcast presentation. It’s based on, “Image Secrets of the Corporate Webcast by Ken Molay“, which he shares his techniques to make video presenters appear confident, poised and credible in a web event, considerations for proper lighting, seating, background, and dress, best practices for posture, eye movements, and body language, and how to make appearing on camera stress-free for your presenters to have the greatest impact on their audience.

Video chat company ooVoo partnered with Beverly Hills Manners, to provide the tips users need to maximize not only the impression they impart on video, but also their productivity on a call. To view a complete list of ooVoo’s video conferencing tips visit: www.ooVoo.com/etiquette

Etiquette tips highlights:

Pick a facilitator to help manage any over-exuberant participants.

Ask permission if you wish to record a video chat. Privacy is expected until consent is given otherwise

Today, online video has become as prevalent as text on the web was more than a decade ago and is now being used as an effective marketing tool for businesses small and large alike. In a recent article in the New York Times, Kermit Pattison highlighted the growing trend of businesses using video as a low-cost way to reach to sell their products, connect with customers for deeper conversations and communicate their brand. The barriers to creating and distributing professional-quality video have been eroded with the development of affordable content creation tools and the solutions available from online video platforms.

In the example presented by the New York Times, Pattison focused on how a small California manufacturing company, Ceilume, decided to use online video as a way to tell customers how its products were different from its competitors. Pattison spoke with Ed Davis, President of Ceilume, who discussed how video marketing helped tell his company’s story better than any other marketing approach it had tried before.

According to Pattison:

“Over the last several years, Ceilume has produced dozens of YouTube videos for product demonstrations, advertisements and how-to instruction. These videos are embedded in the company Web site or show up in results when customers search for keywords. As a result, Ceilume has reached tens of thousands of customers at a very low cost.”

Here’s one of Ceilume’s video from its YouTube Channel, Can I Afford a Coffered Ceiling? that offers information to customers rather than a blatant sales pitch:

SHOW YOUR PRODUCTS – Online video may be the best way to demonstrate a product. Customers can see the actual product and make purchasing decisions based on what they see rather than having to request a sample.

CREATE A DESTINATION – Having an online video spokesperson in your video adds that human touch that no other marketing tool can duplicate, short of being there in person, and when you add that element to your company website you create a reason for customers to keep coming back. Your website can become your company channel full of useful information that connects with your customers and you’ll be seen not as pitching products, but as customer-friendly experts.

USE ANALYTICS AND TOOLS – All video platforms, including: YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, Blip.tv, and professional platforms like Brightcove, Ooyala or Kaltura, offer tools that allow you to measure the effect of your videos. The ability to measure video traffic beyond “views”-including audience dropoff, what sites and search terms are referring viewers, and audience geography-offers content publishers deeper insight into both the viewing habits of their audience and the extent of your video’s reach.

BUILD A BRAND CHANNEL – One way to get the attention of customers is invite them to become your video producers — especially if they jump off cliffs, ski down steep powder ridges or do somersaults on BMX bikes.

ADVERTISE WITH VIDEO – YouTube is the second-largest search engine after Google (which owns YouTube) and represents a huge audience of potential customers. It offers a dozen advertising options, including banner ads, promoted videos that appear on top and beside search results, and “preroll ads” that appear during other YouTube videos much like a conventional TV commercial. YouTube recently announced that it was displaying more than three billion ads per week.

OFFER INSTRUCTION – Pictures are really worth a thousand words and video multiplies that equation with 30 pictures a second. Online video makes it easy to follow the adage “Show, don’t tell.” Many businesses have turned to video for instruction manuals and how-to guides.

In this video from OnlineVideo.net, Troy Dreier talks with Sorenson Media’s COO Eric Quanstrom about What Is an Online Video Platform? They discuss the basics of OVPs and the value that OVPs bring to small businesses. According to VidCompare, an Online Video Platform is: “typically a SaaS (software as a service) solution providing end-to-end tools to manage, publish and measure online video content for both on-demand and live delivery. Typical components of an OVPP include video hosting, encoding, custom players, syndication, analytics, as well as interactivity and monetization through a variety of online advertising options typically 3rd-party ad-servers/networks. Most OVPPs offer scalable product packages for both self-serve SMB publishers up to large media companies.”

This video is from a panel session I moderated at Streaming Media East 2010 on, Video Publishing Platforms, and lays the groundwork for what content owners to better understand what type of publishing platform they need and what they should expect to pay for managing content, the process and main features of publishing platforms and the viability of build vs. buy. Each presenter shared use cases that demonstrated how customers are using online video for business, along with new features available from their platforms.

A number of vendors offer video publishing platforms, the features and functionality-not to mention cost-vary widely. Some vendors focus their solutions on content management and monetization, while others are geared towards enabling syndication and interactive advertising campaigns. Adding to the confusion is the fact that different platform vendors have different metrics for billing, and costs rise as content owners become more successful.